In the previous post, I observed that the Supreme Court's influence is greatly diminished relative to its former influence: in 1900, the Supreme Court rendered about 1.4 verdicts per 100,000 American citizens in five years time; today, the Supreme Court renders about 0.13 verdicts per 100,000 American citizens in five years time. In other words, by this measure, the Supreme Court's influence was ten times as great in 1900 as it is today: in 1900, there were ten times as many judicial opportunities to check the growth and reach of the federal government.
While there are fewer judicial checks on the growth and reach of the federal government, the reach of the judiciary into the lives of the American people has not been shortened by at least one ominous measure. Regarding incarceration, the caging of once-free men, the grasp of the judiciary is far greater than it has ever been.
In fact, it is far greater in both nominal and relative terms. In 1900, only 69 of every 100,000 Americans were incarcerated in state and federal prisons; by 2000, 478 of every 100,000 Americans were incarcerated in state and federal prisons. In 2010, 731 of every 100,000 Americans were incarcerated. In other words, incarcerations are accelerating: exponential growth appears in both nominal and relative terms.
The "Caging of America" was the subject of a recent article by the New Yorker which observed that "Mass incarceration on a scale almost unexampled in human history is a fundamental fact of our country...Over all, there are now more people under 'correctional supervision' in America—more than six million—than were in the Gulag Archipelago (Siberian concentration camps) under Stalin at its height."
According to Rose Heyer of the Prison Policy Initiative, "the United States is now the global leader in incarceration". Of course, we didn't vie for this distinction. In fact, it is embarrassing. It seems rather unprogressive for the leader of the free world to cage more and more of its citizens. So, how did we earn this distinction?
As illustrated in my previous post, it was ten times as likely that the Supreme Court would act to protect one from government in 1900 as it is today. The United States Constitution sought to protect the people from the government (not the government from the people) by granting the judiciary the power and duty to check the exercise of executive power in execution of the law. This leaves one to wonder: does the lack of checks, as observed, explain the cages? While confluence will not prove correlation, perhaps additional research would?
